Introduction to Sustainability

Sustainable development, sustainable community, sustainable industry, sustainable agriculture. You may have heard these words used in many different ways, but what does "sustainability" really mean and how can you tell if your community is sustainable? Sustainability is related to the quality of life in a community -- whether the economic, social and environmental systems that make up the community are providing a healthy, productive, meaningful life for all community residents, present and future.

How has the quality of life in your community changed over the last 20 or 40 years?
How has your community changed economically?
Are there fewer or more good-paying jobs - are people working more and earning less or are most people living well?
Is there more or less poverty and homelessness?
Is it easier or harder for people to find homes that they can afford?
How has your community changed socially?
Is there less or more crime?
Are people less or more willing to volunteer?
Are fewer or more people running for public office or working on community boards?
How has your community changed environmentally?
Has air quality in the urban areas gotten better or worse?
Are there more or fewer warnings about eating fish caught in local streams?
Has the water quality gotten better or worse?

These are traditional measures of communities. We use numbers to show progress: "Unemployment rose 0.4 percent in January," or "The economy grew 2% last year." However, the traditional numbers only show changes in one part of the community without showing the many links between the community's economy, society and environment. It is as if a community were made of three separate parts -- an economic part, a social part and an environmental part that do not overlap like the picture below:

A view of community as three separate, unrelated parts: an economic part, a social part and an environmental part. However, when society, economy and environment are viewed as separate, unrelated parts of a community, the community's problems are also viewed as isolated issues. Economic development councils try to create more jobs. Social needs are addressed by health care services and housing authorities. Environmental agencies try to prevent and correct pollution problems. This piecemeal approach can have a number of bad side-effects:

Solutions to one problem can make another problem worse. Creating affordable housing is a good thing, but when that housing is built in areas far from workplaces, the result is increased traffic and the pollution that comes with it.

Piecemeal solutions tend to create opposing groups. How often have you heard the argument 'If the environmentalists win, the economy will suffer,' and its opposing view 'If business has its way, the environment will be destroyed.' As this figure illustrates, the economy exists entirely within society, because all parts of the human economy require interaction among people. However, society is much more than just the economy. Friends and families, music and art, religion and ethics are important elements of society, but are not primarily based on exchanging goods and services.

Society, in turn, exists entirely within the environment. Our basic requirements -- air, food and water -- come from the environment, as do the energy and raw materials for housing, transportation and the products we depend on.

Finally, the environment surrounds society. At an earlier point in human history, the environment largely determined the shape of society. Today the opposite is true: human activity is reshaping the environment at an ever-increasing rate. The parts of the environment unaffected by human activity are getting smaller all the time. However, because people need food, water and air to survive, society can never be larger than the environment.

Sustainability requires managing all households -- individual, community, national, and global -- in ways that ensure that our economy and society can continue to exist without destroying the natural environment on which we all depend. Sustainable communities acknowledge that there are limits to the natural, social and built systems upon which we depend. Key questions asked in a sustainable community include: 'Are we using this resource faster than it can be renewed' and 'Are we enhancing the social and human capital upon

which our community depends?

Sustainability is an issue for all communities, from small rural towns that are losing the natural environment upon which their jobs depend, to large metropolitan areas where crime and poverty are decreasing the quality of life, Indicators measure whether a community is getting better or worse at providing all its members with a productive, enjoyable life, both now and in the future.

Piecemeal solutions tend to focus on short-term benefits without monitoring long-term results. The pesticide DDT seemed like a good solution to insect pests at the time, but the long-term results were devastating.

Rather than a piecemeal approach, what we need is a view of the community that takes into account the links between the economy, the environment and the society. The figure below is frequently used to show the connections:

Actions to improve conditions in a sustainable community take these connections into account. The very questions asked about issues in a 'sustainable' community include references to these links. For example, the question 'Do the jobs available match the skills of the available work force?' looks at the link between economy and education. Understanding the three parts and their links is key to understanding sustainability, because sustainability is about more than just quality of life, It is about understanding the connections between and achieving balance among the social, economic, and environmental pieces of a community.

We can make an even better picture of a sustainable community than the three partially connected circles shown above. Rather than the three partially connected circles shown on the previous page, a better picture of a sustainable community is the circles within circles shown below:

A view of community as three concentric circles: the economy exists within society, and both the economy and society exist within the environment.

Workshop materials sponsored by US EPA Office of Sustainable Ecosystems and Communities (OSEC) under a cooperative agreement with Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Developed and produced by: Hart Environmental Data www.subjectmatters.com/indicators

Modified 12/7/2007